VALSUANI
Are the Valsuani Degas Plasters Real? The Controversy, Evidence, and Open Questions
No single answer: the roughly 73–75 plaster figures that surfaced from the Valsuani foundry’s own storage after 2001–2004 have been authenticated by the Degas family’s Succession Degas (2007) and the Comité Degas, and bronzes cast from them since 1997 sell for six and seven figures. But the plasters carry no documented pre-1955 paper trail, no major independent Degas sculpture specialist has endorsed a lifetime dating, and the National Gallery of Art’s own Degas sculpture catalogue excludes them by name. This dossier documents the evidence on both sides and what remains unproven.
Evidence Timeline
| Date | Event | Source |
|---|---|---|
| 1917 | Degas dies. His heirs find about 150 wax and clay sculptures scattered through his studio; 80 are inventoried as complete. | Walter F. Maibaum, Questions and Answers: The Sculptures of Edgar Degas, The Degas Sculpture Project Ltd, April 10, 2019, degassculptureproject.org |
| 1919–1936 | The A.A. Hébrard foundry casts 74 of the inventoried waxes into bronze editions, using intermediate bronze “Modèles” — not plaster — as the casting masters. | Maibaum, Questions and Answers, 2019 |
| 1937 | The Hébrard foundry closes; Adrien-A. Hébrard dies the same year. | Maibaum, Questions and Answers, 2019 |
| 1955 | Hébrard’s daughter, Nelly Hébrard, resumes casting Degas bronzes at the Valsuani foundry (established 1908 by Claude Valsuani). The same year, 68 surviving original waxes are revealed publicly, and a group of roughly 75 plaster figures — later at the center of this dispute — arrives at Valsuani. | Maibaum, Questions and Answers, 2019; see also Who Founded the Valsuani Foundry? |
| 1956 | American philanthropist Paul Mellon purchases the surviving waxes; most later enter the National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C. | Maibaum, Questions and Answers, 2019 |
| 1976 | The bronze “Modèles” Hébrard used as casting masters become publicly known for the first time, about 60 years after Degas’s death. | Maibaum, Questions and Answers, 2019 |
| 1980 (Maibaum’s own account: 1981) | Leonardo Benatov (1943–2018) purchases the Valsuani foundry. | The Art Newspaper, May 1, 2010; Maibaum, Questions and Answers, 2019 |
| 1997–1998 | The foundry, trading as Airaindor-Valsuani, casts and sells a limited edition of Little Dancer bronzes from a plaster in the disputed group — reported at 46 bronzes in total — years before any outside scientific dating of the plasters was published. | Wikipedia, Little Dancer of Fourteen Years, accessed September 2026 |
| 2001–2004 | The wider group of roughly 75 plasters is examined and its existence publicized; researchers report the plasters do not match the Hébrard bronze “Modèles” and are not simple copies of them. | Maibaum, Questions and Answers, 2019 |
| 2007 | The Degas Sculpture Project Ltd (Walter Maibaum’s company, which markets the Valsuani-cast editions) consults the artist’s living heirs, the Succession Degas, who authenticate the plasters and the bronzes cast from them. | Maibaum, Questions and Answers, 2019 |
| January 2010 | A closed meeting of Degas scholars reviews the Valsuani casts; a participant is later quoted describing “absolutely universal agreement that these things are not what they’re being advertised as.” | ARTnews, We Need to Talk About Purdue’s Newly Donated Degas Sculptures |
| 2010 | Exhibitions of the Valsuani-cast bronzes open at the Tel Aviv Museum of Art and tour to Athens, Sofia, and Thessaloniki; organizers cite a combined edition value of more than $500 million across 29 bronze sets, 8 of them reported sold at that point. | The Art Newspaper, Disputed Bronzes Cast from Plasters Attributed to Degas on Show in Tel Aviv, May 1, 2010 |
| 2013 | Degas scholar Patricia Failing states: “There is no historical evidence to support the assertion that any of the Valsuani plasters were made during Degas’s lifetime.” | ARTnews, 2013 |
| November 18, 2019 | A French court orders the Valsuani foundry to close and liquidate its holdings to pay creditors. | ARTnews, Nov. 18, 2019; Artforum, Nov. 2019 |
| February 2023 | Purdue University alumnus Avrum Gray donates 74 Valsuani-cast Degas bronzes, including a Little Dancer, valued at $21 million by the university (up to $52 million by market estimate). | Purdue University newsroom, Feb. 2023 |
| 2024 | Purdue opens the collection to the public; press coverage revisits the authenticity dispute, noting the university’s own announcement did not mention it. | ARTnews, We Need to Talk About Purdue’s Newly Donated Degas Sculptures |
Claims vs. Evidence
| Side | Claim | Evidence cited | Source |
|---|---|---|---|
| Pro-authenticity (Gregory Hedberg, Walter Maibaum / The Degas Sculpture Project, Succession Degas, Comité Degas) |
The plasters were cast directly from Degas’s original waxes, and at least ten were made during his lifetime (c. 1887–1912), most likely by his friend the sculptor Albert Bartholomé. | The plasters are consistently larger and sharper in surface detail than the Hébrard bronze “Modèles” — the opposite of what copying from a bronze would produce; radiocarbon dating of plant-fiber binder (University of Arizona laboratory) places the plaster material before 1955; petrographic analysis matched a Degas plaster’s component materials to a documented pre-1920 Rodin plaster; two letters from Degas to Bartholomé (1884, 1888) discuss casting plans. | Maibaum, Questions and Answers, 2019 |
| Skeptical (majority of independent Degas sculpture specialists; National Gallery of Art) |
No lifetime dating is proven; the plasters have no documented pre-1955 provenance and surfaced only through a foundry and dealer network with a direct financial interest in authenticating and selling the resulting bronzes. | “No major Degas sculpture specialist has expressed agreement with Hedberg’s view” (Patricia Failing); the National Gallery of Art’s own Degas sculpture catalogue lists the plasters in a footnote stating they are “intentionally not included herein”; a January 2010 closed review by Degas scholars reportedly reached “universal agreement” against the advertised dating; the Musée d’Orsay and other French national museums have not endorsed the plasters. | ARTnews, ‘Intentionally Not Included Herein’; ARTnews, 2013; ARTnews, We Need to Talk About Purdue’s Newly Donated Degas Sculptures |
What the Primary Record Actually Shows
Some facts in this dispute are not contested by either side. Every Degas bronze in existence, without exception, was cast after the artist’s death in 1917 — he never authorized a bronze edition of any of his roughly 150 wax and clay sculptures during his lifetime. The Hébrard foundry’s 74-figure edition, cast 1919–1936 from intermediate bronze “Modèles,” is the historically documented baseline against which every later claim is measured. It is also undisputed that a group of plaster figures existed in Valsuani’s storage from at least 1955, and that their existence and possible significance went uninvestigated for roughly half a century.
What is disputed is not whether the plasters are physical objects — they demonstrably are — but when they were made and by whom. The pro-authenticity case rests on comparative measurement, radiocarbon and petrographic material dating, and two letters in which Degas discusses casting plans with Bartholomé. None of that evidence is a contemporaneous, named record placing a specific plaster in Degas’s studio or in Bartholomé’s hands. The material-dating tests establish that the plaster material predates 1955, or in some cases 1920 — a window that covers Degas’s lifetime, the years just after his death, and the Hébrard foundry’s own working years, without narrowing to any one of them.
What Remains Open
- No pre-1955 document — an inventory, invoice, will, or piece of correspondence — has been published that names a specific plaster and places it with Degas, Bartholomé, or Hébrard before that date.
- The scientific dating evidence narrows a manufacture window (pre-1920 or pre-1955) but cannot identify the maker: it is equally consistent with Bartholomé or a Hébrard foundry worker making the plasters shortly after Degas’s death as with Degas approving them himself during his lifetime.
- Independent, disinterested peer review by Degas sculpture specialists without a commercial or family stake in the editions has not endorsed the lifetime dating; the two bodies that have (Succession Degas, Comité Degas) are the artist’s own heirs and a market-facing authentication body, not an independent academic panel.
- Reported counts for the plasters themselves are inconsistent even among proponents — accounts describe “73,” “74,” and “75” plasters (75 physical objects representing 74 distinct compositions, since two versions of sculpture No. 3 exist) — a level of imprecision worth weighing against any certainty claim.
Why This Is a Different Question From “Who Founded Valsuani?”
This controversy concerns the Valsuani foundry’s post-1980 ownership under Leonardo Benatov, trading as Airaindor-Valsuani — not the foundry’s founding generation. Claude Valsuani, who established the foundry in 1908 and ran it under the “C. VALSUANI” mark until his death in 1923, is not a party to this dispute; see Who Founded the Valsuani Foundry? for that separate, independently documented history. The foundry passed through several owners between Claude’s death and 1980, including his son Marcel (per What Is a Valsuani Bronze Worth?), and Nelly Hébrard’s 1955 casting arrangement with the foundry predates Benatov’s purchase by 25 years. Treating “Valsuani” as a single, continuous entity across a century obscures exactly the kind of attribution question this site exists to correct. Our Valsuani Bronze Authentication guide covers the documented marks and protocol for genuine Claude Valsuani-era bronzes; it does not resolve the separate plasters question addressed here.
For the fuller picture of why Valsuani attribution accuracy matters — from museum collections to auction results — see The Valsuani Legacy. This dossier is part of our broader Valsuani research hub.
Sources
- Walter F. Maibaum, Questions and Answers: The Sculptures of Edgar Degas, The Degas Sculpture Project Ltd, April 10, 2019, degassculptureproject.org
- ARTnews, Valsuani Foundry, Known for Controversial ‘Authentic Copies’ of Degas Works, Ordered to Close to Pay Off Debts, Nov. 18, 2019
- Artforum, Valsuani Foundry Ordered Closed by French Government, Nov. 2019
- ARTnews, ‘Intentionally Not Included Herein’
- ARTnews, The Degas Debate: Analyzing the Controversial Plasters
- ARTnews, A Controversy over Degas and Two Responses to ‘A Controversy over Degas’
- ARTnews, Adding to the Confusion
- ARTnews, We Need to Talk About Purdue’s Newly Donated Degas Sculptures
- ARTnews, Benatov: The Man Behind the Bronzes
- The Art Newspaper, Disputed Bronzes Cast from Plasters Attributed to Degas on Show in Tel Aviv, May 1, 2010
- Purdue University newsroom, Purdue University Receives $21 Million Art Donation of Degas Sculptures from Engineering Alum Avrum Gray, Feb. 2023
- Wikipedia, Little Dancer of Fourteen Years, accessed September 2026
Frequently Asked Questions
Are Valsuani bronzes of Degas authentic?
It depends which Valsuani you mean. Claude Valsuani’s own lifetime-era foundry (1908–1923) is well documented and undisputed. The post-1980 Airaindor-Valsuani bronzes, cast from plaster figures found in the foundry’s storage, are authenticated by the Degas family’s Succession Degas but not endorsed by most independent Degas scholars.
Are the Degas plasters real?
The plasters are real physical objects; what is disputed is when they were made. Material testing dates them to before 1955, in some cases before 1920 — a window covering Degas’s lifetime and the years just after. No documented pre-1955 paper trail confirms who made them or exactly when.
What is the Valsuani plasters controversy?
Roughly 73–75 plaster figures surfaced from the Valsuani foundry after 2001–2004. Their owner and allied researchers date them to Degas’s lifetime using material testing; most independent Degas scholars and the National Gallery of Art have declined to endorse that dating, citing the lack of documented provenance before 1955.
Are posthumous Degas bronze casts still “real” Degas sculptures?
Yes, in the sense that every Degas bronze in existence — Hébrard’s 1919–1936 editions included — was cast after his 1917 death from his waxes or from masters derived from them. Posthumous casting is normal for Degas; the Valsuani plasters dispute is specifically about which intermediate objects trace directly to Degas’s own hand.
Last updated: 7 September 2026